How NOT to sell your house! (How to sell a house)

Member Name: idoodooyou

Product:	How to sell a house
Date:	21/05/08 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Loss of money, stress, frustration.

HOW NOT TO SELL YOUR HOME!

We are currently selling our lovely three bedroom home as we are relocating.
From the start we probably made a mistake with our estate agent, opting to use the same one we bought the house from in the first place... thinking back, we were not that satisfied with him the first time round!

We made a decision to sell, and booked an appointment with the agent for a valuation. He came and gave us a rough idea of how much to market the property at. When we agreed on the figure he sent one of the girls from his office around to get details and take photo's.

This is where the problems started, we moved a few days later to a new area and trusted the agent to look after the sale for us. Shortly after, we recieved the details of how our house looked on paper and we also checked it out online. They had only gone and used the photo's from when we bought the house from them. This rally annoyed us but as we were so far away we just contacted them by phone and they just fobbed us off with some excuse.

We heard nothing for weeks and weeks until eventually I phoned to check on the progress. It was then I was told that there had been loads of viewings and they had two people interested... I wondered when they were going to tell us?!

A couple of days later we had a call from the agents office, stating that there had been an offer. The offer was over £10,000 less than our asking price so I immediatly said no, however, the lady advised me that the market was going to get slow and we should seriously consider this offer. When I asked her why the offer was so poor, she stated that the lady who made the offer would 'like' a new bathroom... I thought, yes.... so would I !! She asked me whether I would like to talk it over with my hubby and I said no, I already knew he would laugh at that offer.

That was the last contact I had with the agent, and from then on they contacted my hubby in work on his mobile. A good move on their part as he would not be as strong willed as me and would not say no so easily.

The following day they contacted him again with another offer, declined by him, and again later in the day with another offer, which he accepted. Contact was to a minimum after this, we only heard from them when there was yet another problem or the lady buying had yet another request, or when they 'lost' the keys to our property, they called to ask us what they should do!

The lady buyer has made so many requests of us to date, through our agents, who always seem to have her best interests at heart. She has finally gotten us back down to almost what she offered first day and our agent seems to think its a good idea to keep dropping the price for her. He knows that we are stuck and need this sale to go through, but really, we could hang back for the next sale, even though it may leave us short of cash for a while.

My hubby got very annoyed a few days ago and told the agent he would take the house off the market so the agent then got onto our solicitor (who is a friend of my hubby's) to get him to phone my hubby to tell him how slow the market is and advise him to continue with the sale.

In conclusion, my point is this... All along we thought that as we were in a way employing this person to do a service for us, he would of course get us what we deserve. Unfortunetly this is not the case.
The agent takes around 2% of the sale price of our home, so in theory, for every thousand we drop, he loses very very little, and he would prefer to lose this little amount rather than lose the sale.

We are amazed at how long it has taken us to realise this. We have been taken for a ride and we are going to be out of pocket for it.

When selling your house, by all means de-clutter and de-personalise, and for goodness sake, get the place a lick of paint... it wont cost a whole lot to spruce the place up and make it more appealing to the general market.
However when choosing who you are going to trust to sell your house for you, do it carefully.

Dont do as we have done and rush into the first agents office, just because it is at the end of your street and everyone else seems to use him.

Realise that you are in fact not paying for a service, or at least don't look at it as a service, because if it was a service, it would be done properly and the person you were paying WOULD actually care about losing money.

Shop around for your estate agent until you are comfortable and last but not least, do not settle for the easy option because the easy option is what we got, and thats a money grabber who does not care that we are a young family just starting out, who have just come to be in a bad position. To him we are desperate, an easy target....

..... and yes, we are now changing agents, live and learn eh?!

Summary: Be careful when choosing who you trust